Unquestionably, the most important single development of the year on the local art scene was -- unfortunately -- the recession. It had been gaining on Baltimore before 1991, but this was the year it hit hard, with cutbacks in funds from public and private sources having major effects:
* The Baltimore Museum of Art, its city funds cut more than 7 percent, will close for two weeks beginning Jan. 20, lay off six people and reduce its days open from six to five and its weekly hours from 41 to 32.
* Less hard hit, the Walters Art Gallery is freezing salaries, eliminating overtime for workers paid by the hour, leaving staff vacancies unfilled, and will scale back on exhibition installations.
* The Baltimore City Life Museums eliminated three positions.
* The Maryland Historical Society this year did not get a state grant that in the past amounted to about $125,000. So far this has caused no layoffs or program cutbacks, but vacant positions are not being filled.
* This was also the year the city lost two of its major commerical gallery spaces. In March, the Dalsheimer gallery, which had shown both local and national artists, closed. And at the end of the summer Constantine Grimaldis, generally considered the leading Baltimore dealer, ceased operations at his North Charles Street space, although he remains in business at the larger Morton Street space.
Among other retrenchments, Maryland Art Place will rent part of the space now used for exhibitions in its Saratoga Street building, and will probably scale back from six to four exhibitions a year. There was no cut in city funds to School 33 this year, but one is expected next year and the art center is seeking additional private funding. Times are bad all over, and city- and state-supported organizations that have already been cut can anticipate even more drastic cuts in fiscal 1993.
But the year did have its bright spots, and the brightest of all
was the opening of Hackerman House. The Walters restored one of the great town houses of the 19th century as the home of its Asian art collection, primarily including Chinese porcelains of the 16th to 19th centuries and Japanese 19th century objects. They are given distinguished architectural settings in Hackerman House's great main floor rooms.
If we lost two galleries, we gained Galerie Francoise et Ses Freres at Green Spring Station, where since April Mary Jo Gordon has been presenting imaginative exhibits primarily of works by local artists.
